LI life: BIM and climate change By Romy Rawlings and Mike Shilton
How to make the most of BIM to reduce carbon emissions The LI published BIM for Landscape in 2016. In July the LI’s Digital Group brought together people from across the industry to look at the current state of play. A report of this wideranging discussion will be published shortly. Part of the discussion was devoted to BIM and climate change. Digital Group members Romy Rawlings and Mike Shilton argue that we could be making far better use of BIM as a way of collaborating to achieve lower carbon goals. 1. Visualisation of a street in New York. © Shutterstock
BIM has had the potential to bring about 20% savings of cost, time and waste over the whole life of a construction project
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n estimated 40-50% of global carbon emissions are linked to the activities of the built environment industry – those of us working in the sector therefore have the potential to make a positive impact to reduce this1. If we have any hope of achieving this, we must start thinking
differently about the impact of our action as professionals and, in particular, we need to look at the impact of how we specify our work. From its inception Building Information Modelling (BIM) has had the potential to bring about 20% savings2 of cost, time and waste over the whole life of a construction project.
The key words here are whole life of a project. We cannot continue to focus only on the construction phase, with barely a thought given to long-term management. This is particularly relevant for landscape, where ongoing use has the greatest potential for carbon savings compared to the construction phase.
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